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Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
Posted on 01/29/2016 12:23:32 PM PST by Nachum
CLEVELAND — In the operating room at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Brian Fitzsimons has long relied on a decades-old drug to prevent hemorrhages in patients undergoing open-heart surgery. The drug, aminocaproic acid, is widely used, cheap and safe. “It never hurt,†he said. “It only helps.â€
Then manufacturing issues caused a national shortage. “We essentially did military-style triage,†said Dr. Fitzsimons, an anesthesiologist, restricting the limited supply to patients at the highest risk of bleeding complications. Those who do not get the once-standard treatment at the clinic, the nation’s largest cardiac center, are not told. “The patient is asleep,†he said. “The family never knows about it.â€
In recent years, shortages of all sorts of drugs — anesthetics, painkillers, antibiotics, cancer treatments — have become the new normal in American medicine. The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists currently lists inadequate supplies of more than 150 drugs and therapeutics, for reasons ranging from manufacturing problems to federal safety crackdowns to drugmakers abandoning low-profit products. But while such shortages have periodically drawn attention, the rationing that results from them has been largely hidden from patients and the public.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“ObamaScareCare”
It’s more like ObamaScarceCare since that what it is all about - rationing health care.
The list, Ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
Most of the shortage situations have nothing to do with Obama. A lot of it is actually private enterprise problems.
Funny how those 'private enterprise problems' seem to happen more often when the government takes over the process of the delivery of care.
Yeah the article alludes to it. The “widely used, cheap and safe” drug is not nearly as profitable as the prescription psoriasis or ED pill that you can hawk direct to consumers on TV for a hundred bucks a pill.
So the drug companies stop making them.
“unexpected”. . .
How can the US try to destroy the Afghan economy, which is based on opiates, when there is a worldwide shortage of pain medication? Is that what the WOD has brought?
The only solution is for the government to go into the drug production business. < / sarcasm >
Stay out of the hospital, if possible. They are dangerous places.
So if a US manufacturer cannot keep up with demand, import them from India, which, I have heard, has a large and growing pharmaceutical industry.
I would bet there could be some pretty good generic prices, too.
If the drug could be made at a profit, it would be.
The problem is that drugs have become so highly regulated that it is impossible to make many of them at a profit. It is not the cost of manufacturing the drugs that is the problem, it is the cost of meeting the government regulations, which are voluminous, detailed, and with severe penalties for minor lapses.
The drugs are clearly in demand. You say they are cheap.
So, why don’t you just start up a company, make them, and make a good profit?
There have been some problems at times with Indian pharmaceutical manufacturing but my wife and I have many times taken Indian drugs with no issues (she is from India).
“So if a US manufacturer cannot keep up with demand, import them from India, which, I have heard, has a large and growing pharmaceutical industry.”
I would place good money on the proposition that the India pharmaceutical companies cannot meet the U.S. government regulations, which is why the drug is not imported from there to meet the demand here.
One can - easily - convert the compound caprolactam to amino caproic acid; that’s relevant because caprolactam is used to make a particular form on nylon (”Nylon 6”), and about a *billion pounds* of caprolactam are produced annually.
Even given the need for pharmaceutical grade purity for the amino caproic acid, with a billion pounds of caprolactam precursor around, I have a hard time seeing why there should be any shortage of the stuff.
If you like your medicine, YOU JUST GOT OBAMA’ED!
The FDA is forcing the shortages. This is a manufactured crisis.
It helps Drug companies sell high end drugs as the FDA clamps down on effective generics.
Been watching this for a few years. Interesting how liquid Thorazine disappeared right when Zyprexa was marketing its meltable.
Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
Oh, those drugs. They may not be pure enough and can’t be approved because the FDA has not studied and tested them to be safe for us sheeple.
Voltran (basically topical ibuprofen) for example. $50 bucks or more a tube here and you can buy it internationally for $8 bucks OTC without a prescription. All of it is made by Azko in Germany. But it is illegal for you to buy it here without a prescription. It isn’t “safe”.
All thanks to Government controlled, crony-capitalist socialized medicine.
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